Romola

6/6/2022

It's actually quite hard to get excited about this rather dreary adaptation of George Eliot's quite gripping story of love and survival during the turbulent events in late 15th century Florence. As was common at the time of her writing this story (1862), she used language to expertly craft and deliver a tapestry of interwoven themes and characterisations that created a rich, multi-layered series of themes. Well, sadly for this, much of these have been thrown under the bus, and we are left with the two Gish sisters in a melodramatic tale of deception and intrigue all right, but not amongst the Machiavellian-style politics of the time, but of the pair and their romantic interludes with the manipulative chancer "Tito" (William Powell) - who is married to one of them, and having an affair with